bio-privateering
Carbon Trading is Making a Killing and Destroying the Environment
Press Release: Carbon Markets Violate Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Threaten Cultural Survival
“Indigenous Peoples are being forced to sign over their territories for REDD to the Gangsters of the Century, carbon traders, who are invading the world’s remaining forests that exist thanks to the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples,” denounced Marlon Santi, President of the CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, one of the most powerful native organizations in the world. “Our forests are spaces for life not carbon markets.”
Indigenous leader kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to surrender carbon rights for REDD in Papua New Guinea
New York, USA — As carbon traders hawk permits to pollute at the Second Annual Carbon Trading Summit, Indigenous Peoples denounced that selling the sky not only corrupts the sacred but also destroys the climate, violates human rights and threatens cultural survival.
“Carbon trading and carbon offsets are a crime against humanity and Creation,” said Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network. “The sky is sacred. This carbon market insanity privatizes the air and sells it to climate criminals like Shell so they can continue to pollute and destroy the climate and our future, rather than reducing their emissions at source.”
Business as Usual: Biomass Power Grab by The Gene Giants
This is a joint News Release by Biofuelwatch / ETC Group / Greenpeace.
BIOMASS POWER GRAB HIGHLIGHTED AS BIOTECH INDUSTRY MEETS IN MONTREAL
Montreal- July 21 2009 — As hundreds of delegates gathered for the Sixth Annual Conference on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing at Palais des congrès in Old Montreal, a group of NGOs held an early morning press conference across the street. Greenpeace, ETC Group and Biofuelwatch joined forces to warn that the “green” energy of the biotech industry was mostly hype, that governments should not add to their already generous subsidies of the industry and that the feedstock on which it is all based – so called “biomass” – is neither plentiful nor easily converted into renewable chemicals, plastics and fuels.
Jim Thomas, a researcher from ETC Group, charged that behind the thin, green veneer of clean energy and renewable plastics, Big Bio is, in fact, engaged in a huge industrial power grab: “The Gene Giants’ control over the smallest components of life such as DNA has now become much more rapid and sophisticated with billions of dollars being invested in new technologies such as metagenomics and synthetic biology. Twenty-five percent of the world’s so-called biomass has already been commodified. Now industry is going after the remaining seventy-five percent. The quest for greater quantities of plant cellulose – the most abundant organic material on earth – will make nature reserves and marginal lands more commercially valuable than ever before. Three years ago, NGOs warned that the demand for corn ethanol would lead to higher food prices and hunger. We were right. And today we’re warning that this massive biomass-grab will bring about similarly devastating consequences for people – especially in the Third World, because that is where these companies will look when there’s no more feedstock closer to home.”
Rachel Smolker from UK-based Biofuelwatch challenged the companies present at the BIO Conference to ask themselves a fundamental question: “Is there enough biomass out there for the all the purposes being envisaged? The answer is a resounding no.” She cited targets and figures for biomass-use being used by governments and industry to prove the point: The U.S. has adopted a target of 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022, claiming there is 1.3 billion tons of available biomass. Yet by some analyses, this would require mowing down 80% of the available biomass from agricultural, forest and grass lands! And this is just one target. The U.S. air force has set itself a goal of replacing 25% of its fuel demand with biofuels, and commercial aviation is following suit. The chemicals industry has set a target of replacing 10% of its feedstocks with biomass as well. Meanwhile, policy measures intended to support the development of renewable energy (electricity and heat) are largely (about 70 percent of subsidies) translating into co-firing of biomass with coal and other biomass technologies. These combined targets are entirely unsustainable, especially in light of the need to feed a growing population, declining ecosystems and soil and water degradation.
Eric Darier, Director of Greenpeace Quebec, urged governments and private investors to approach the BIO lobby with great caution and to resist blindly jumping on the “innovation bandwagon:” “We need to support and apply the precautionary principle as recognized in international law and conduct vigorous and independent life cycle analyses before declaring any technology ‘green.’” Darier denounced the lack of public participation in debates over biotech and questioned our ability to ensure independent scientific expertise to properly check industry’s claims. “This will require a full strategic assessment of each technology as it is being developed. If not, we shall be left to clean up the mess decades from now, just as we are doing with toxic chemicals and pesticides today.”
The three speakers are available for media interviews.
Eric Darier, Greenpeace Quebec
+1 514 605-6497 www.greenpeace.org
Jim Thomas, ETC Group
+1 613 261-8580 www.etcgroup.org
Rachel Smolker, Biofuelwatch
+1 802 735-7794 www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
The Medicinal Garden of the Royal Military Hospital in Goa: Timothy Walker’s Research
Frederick Noronha features a very interesting interview about the (in situ) Medicinal (botanical) Garden of the Royal Military Hospital in Goa , which can be viewed here:
Visit FN’s blog entry for further info about the important and inspiring work of Timothy Walker..
Esperanza Martinez on Yasuni and the ITT proposal.
This article by CarbonWeb.org deserves to be reproduced in full:
Yasuni – Our Future in Their Hands?
Ecuador proposes to claim compensation in exchange for leaving crude oil in the ground. Esperanza Martinez examines what this means for resource sovereignty.
Oil, for countries that possess it, is often centre stage when it comes to issues of sovereignty. Invasions have been launched to access it and military and political interventions pushed through to control it, leaving the door wide open for corruption.
Invitation to Expedition in the Napo-Ucayali Corridor: June/July 2008
It is still early days of planning, but a small group of people are planning to travel, for the second time, down the Napo river – doing workshops relevant for indigenous peoples’ struggles, such as shamanic civil rights, and healing sessions in communities along the 1000km long and very exciting route from the beginning of the River Napo in Tena, Ecuador to Iquitos (where it meets the Amazon and the Ucayali rivers). The journey goes through one of the most biodiverse regions in the world – right past the Yasuni National Park, before crossing the border into Peru. After visiting The 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference: Magic, Myths and Miracles, which will be held in Iquitos, Peru – July 19th – 26th, 2008, we might continue to Pucallpa….
Contemporary developments in the global economy are very significant for the Amazon rain forest. While this might be said to be true for anywhere at any point in time there are nevertheless good reasons for paying special attention to what maybe the last battle for the survival of the largest rain forest in the world, the loss of which it should need no further justification to lament – and that is the basis upon which this invitation is written….
Anarchism and Indigenous Struggles.
INDIGENOUS ANARCHISM IN BOLIVIA – An Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui,
by Andalusia Knoll, Rustbelt Radio, Pittsburgh
“What happened in Bolivia is that there have been two official histories: the official history written by the [Revolutionary] Nationalist Party—MNR—that basically denies all the agency of both workers and peasants and indigenous peoples; and the official history of the left that forgets about anything that was not Marxist, thus eclipsing or distorting the autonomous history of anarchist unions,
Protecting Community Rights over Traditional Knowledge.
Although the funders of the International Institute for Environment and Development clearly are of the higher echelons of the established society they promote community rights over, essentially, intellectual property rights (a distracting debate around traditional knowledge being protected by private property rights based systems – obviously utter nonsense) in order to “protect” indigenous ways of being and living; which is a good thing – since there are other ways to live than the liberal-conservative order of things.
This page gives a good introduction that concludes:
“We are therefore focusing our research and policy work on the concept of ‘Collective Bio-Cultural Heritage’. This concept, initially developed by ANDES, Peru, recognises the interlinked nature of traditional knowledge, biodiversity, landscapes, culture and customary laws.”
Private property rights cannot save communities – community rights (with added self-determination and autonomy) can (hopefully) save communities, it can’t be that difficult to see, init?!?
The foto shows a gathering above 4000m for a ritual (Febr. 07) to solidify the bonds between the communities in the Parque de la Papa, Pisaq, Cusco, Peru – an amazing place and project where theory and practive of public policy making, autonomy and self-legislation come together. They have 1016 species of potatoes growing there!
Urgent solidarity request for the Gathering of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
On October 11-14, 2007, indigenous peoples and organizations of the Americas will meet in Sonora, Mexico. The gathering is being convened by the Yaqui Tribe of Vicam Community, Sonora (Mexico), the National Indigenous Congress (Mexico), the Nde Cultural Historical Organization of the Nde Apache Nation (USA), “Tierra y Libertad” / Chicana Indigenous Organization, Tucson, Arizona (USA), the Dene Nation/Navajo, the Native and Immigrant Indigenous Development Organization (Mexico-USA), the Tohono O’Odham Nation, (Mexico-USA) and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Mexico).
For more information about the Indigenous Gathering of the Americas:
http://www.encuentroindigena.org/ – or Read the rest of this entry »
Home Sweet Home: Reflections on the Amazon – Part One of ?
Seeking refuge in Europe, to breathe and to reflect, the long, light evenings and the friendliness of the forest (that is the absence of the eternal threat of creatures out to get you) have besieged our imaginations.
The loved ones, the long-time friendships and the new friends are the medium of reflection – telling stories, observing reactions and thinking about it all at a distance ….we get high on our own anecdotal supply with a little help from our friends.
Jatun Sacha – the long, sneaky arm of Pfizer et al.
Jatun Sacha is a lovely place. Comprising 2500 hectares of easily accessible primary rainforest, it is one of the last little paradises around Tena.
Or so it seems…
Promoting the conservation of ecosystems through technical training, scientific research, environmental education, natural resource management, and community development involving local peoples surely can’t be all that bad, even if it meant privatizing many square metres of ancestral indigenous territories. After all this was government policy in the 1970s anyway, and better the land goes to an eco- humanitarian project than some overweight cattle farmer. ¿No?
